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Karan Johar directs Ranbir Kapoor, Anushka Sharma and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan in Ae Dil Hai Mushkil. The story of unrequited love is said to be almost autobiographical with Ranbir playing the dramatized version of Karan Johar.

Ranbir Kapoor plays Ayan Sanger – rich brat pursuing MBA in London while nursing a dream of being a singer. Ayan is also the narrator of the story and the entire movie is told in a flashback while Ayan is being interviewed following his success as a singer. When asked why his songs sound of unrequited love Ayan takes us back to where it all began.

The chance meeting with Alizeh Khan played by Anushka Sharma, the blossoming friendship, the homage to many milestone movies of Bollywood including Ranbir’s tribute to his own father’s iconic Chandani. Delving any further into the story would be a disservice to the nuance that Johar has crafted into the complex relationship dynamics between Ayan and Alizeh. The first half starts off stutteringly where the intensity of Ranbir and the levity of Anushka seem to be a little bit like oil and water. Despite their best effort it isn’t easy to identify nor feel for the characters. Only once the unnecessary shenanigans of Ranbir’s girlfriend and Anushka’s fiancé are done with does the movie really pick up. The scene leading up to the intermission is gut-wrenching in its rawness. This is the Ranbir we know and love. He can play the heartbroken hero a hundred times over but he manages to imbue a sense of novelty, be it his driven Janardhan aka Jordan in Rockstar or the vagabond Bunny in Yeh Jawani hai Deewani, and be it him as the bottled up millennial Ved in Tamasha or coming of age Sid in Wake up Sid. You laugh with his antics and you feel the pain in the pit of your stomach as you see him repeatedly bang a flowerpot on his chest. It is a shame that an actor’s worth today is equated with the box office collection – ADHM may not do the hundreds of crores in business but make no mistake – Ranbir has no peers.

Anushka Sharma is fantastic as Alizeh, a complex character who even in her hysterical scenes seems so genuine. Anushka does a lot of the heavy lifting as the central figure of the story. It would have been better had the writer and the director given a little more thought to her story graph. The back story is dispensed with rather quickly. The reconciliation and the breakup of her relationship with Fawad is done in such a haste that it leaves you a little bewildered.

Thankfully no such complaints with the role crafted for Aishwarya Rai as poetess Saba Naqavi who nurses Ranbir’s broken heart with a tempestuous relationship. Saba has a purpose to the story; a perfect introduction, a fantastic middle and a visceral end. Much has been said about Aishwarya’s beauty and all of it is true but here she has taken her beauty to lethal levels. As the seductive and shayarana Saba she catches you mid-breath and makes you gasp. Even an actor of the calibre of Ranbir diminishes to the background when Aishwarya is on screen. Giving Aishwarya lines which Ranbir describes as “chalti firti Ghalib” is rife with potential for disaster as she often tends to overdo the breathy sensuality but her she is wonderfully restraint and lets those gorgeous blue green eyes do all the work.

Alia Bhatt is Johar’s new lucky mascot and makes a blink and you’ll miss it appearance. Fawad Khan is pleasing to the eye but not much more. Lisa Haydon plays the bimbo to perfection and is genuinely funny. Shah Rukh Khan is a pale shadow of his former romantic self and is difficult to look at and even more difficult to listen to.

The absolute stand out for me has been its music. The title track has all the seriousness that you would expect from a movie about such a combustive relationships. The breakup song and Cutiepie the hallmark Johar dance numbers that are immensely hummable. Bulleya has all the intensity of unrequited love. But the absolute tearjerker is Channa mereya – the lyrics, the expression the context are phenomenal. Anil Mehta’s camera work is gorgeous, but I am sure it must not have been difficult to shoot such a beautiful cast in such spectacular locations. I honestly wish a little more time was spent grounding Alizeh and Ayan’s characters with a little bit of their history and a gradual build up to their friendship. I could easily have done away with the bit with Lisa Haydon entirely regardless of how hilarious she actually was. The dialogues in comparison to the lyrics of the song seem very second rate and do nothing to amp up the emotions. The pre-climax Friends throwback “did she get off the plane” is sublime.

I had a more complex plot going on in my head and in comparison the story is pretty straightforward and conventional. One-night stands and friends with benefits aren’t ground breaking territories anymore and Karan Johar really needs to continue to push the boundaries even more.

Minor complaints aside this is a fantastic movie for so many reasons. Ranbir is transcendental. Anushka relatable and Aishwarya ethereal. Karan Johar surely knows how to tell a love story and I’d rather watch him direct aspirational escapist love story than the ones he ends up producing. Watch it for Ranbir. I’ll re-watch for Aishwarya!

Shakun Batra directs Siddharth Malhotra, Fawad Khan, Alia Bhatt, Ratna Pathak Shah, Rajat Kapoor and Rishi Kapoor in the dysfunctional family drama Kapoor and Sons. Bollywood mainstream movies have mostly steered clear of the uglier side of the familial dynamics and immortalized the gigantic joint families with coordinated dance moves and weddings grander than Laxmi Mittal’s daughter’s, but with the first scene itself Kapoor and Sons sets itself apart. This is more August Osage County than a Barjatiya caper.

The Kapoors consist of Daddy Kapoor played by Rajat Kapoor who once a bank officer is now a failed business owner quickly running through his savings and investing in a mysterious Anu aunty. Mummy Kapoor is Ratna Pathak Shah who made a meal out of playing the high society matriarch Maya Sarabhai, here she plays a character that is a polar opposite as then long-suffering wife who is trapped in a loveless marriage which is taking its toll on her ambition. Granddad Kapoor is Rishi Kapoor who is the glue that holds the entire enterprise together. All seeing and all understanding he doesn’t meddle but passes his time being crude yet lovable. It is his heart attack that brings back the two sons Kapoor’s back home to Coonoor, Rahul the London based successful author and all around perfect child played by Fawad and part-time bartender and aspiring author Arjun from New Jersey. The brothers don’t see eye to eye and are merely cordial out of obligation. There are subtle hints dropped along the way that there is something more sinister than mere sibling rivalry that is the reason for the tension amongst the brothers. Alia Bhatt plays Tia Mallik in a role that most other leading ladies would shy away from because it is not meaty enough and is merely a supporting role but not Alia who continues her march towards greatness as being entirely believable and extremely relatable.

The first half of the movie didn’t blow me away, not because the story or the direction was lacking, both are fantastic there is enough subtlety to keep me interested but it is the screenplay and dialogue that doesn’t seem to coalesce as seamlessly as it does in the second half. The build-up just before interval where Mumma Kapoor confronts Papa Kapoor over his philandering at the 90th birthday celebration for Gramps is something you never ever see in Bollywood. The second half unravels fast and furious and it hits you from out of left field that you are left teetering at the intensity of one tragedy after the other that befalls the Kapoor clan and you are left bleary eyed like Rishi Kapoor who silently watches his “happy family picture” disintegrate before he can take the picture he so badly wanted to take and emblazon it with “Kapoor and Sons since 1921”.

The second half is chockfull of memorable scenes. One where Ratna Pathak Shah tries on Rajat Kapoor’s chappals and breaks down, another where she confronts his perfect child Rahul over his life of lies, another where Rahul confesses his truth to his brother Arjun who an aspiring author himself is left speechless and simply says he needs time process this. There is an endearing scene between Arjun and Tia when he drops her off after having spent a day at a graveyard where she can’t find the right words to describe how she feels and simply says “it just fits” when she is with him, and another where she opens up about her final conversation with her parents. This is a movie that will benefit from rewatch and you will be delighted at the masterfully layered storytelling, not something you usually associate with a Karan Johar production. Every dialogue has a subtext, a sub plot that will stay with you long after the end credits, for instance the one where an exasperated Rajat Kapoor complains to his son about how his mother is being unreasonable by comparing him to her brother in law who used to hit her sister and how Kapoor isn’t that bad, this is how most normal people reason their character flaws and it is a subtlety that makes this movie that much more special for me.

Of the actors Rajat Kapoor, Alia and Siddharth are competent; Rishi Kapoor is a Gem and truly shines despite all that impressive prosthetics and make-up. Fawad Khan is the real revelation here with his measured and sensitive portrayal where he has enough humor and cheek to balance the seriousness that comes with being the older child who is perceived to be perfect.He desperately tries to keep his family together despite everyone’s best effort to make it implode. Ratna Pathak Shah is a national treasure and she must be cherished. I hope she takes on more such roles and stakes her claim on the matriarchal estate in Bollywood.

Kapoor and Sons is masterfully directed, with a strong uncompromising script and a stellar ensemble cast that puts in a brilliant performance individually and as a group. This nuanced look at the grey areas of the domestic drama is a must watch.

Sajid Nadiadwala the producer with the Midas touch dons the director’s hat for the very first time and directs Salman Khan, Jacqueline Fernandez, Randeep Hooda and Nawazuddin Siddiqui in Kick.

A Salman Khan movie defies explanation here is a fully grown man nearing 50s and he still acts like a precocious child and still runs circles around the young bloods of Bollywood when it comes to action sequences. He has insane (not in a good way) dance moves and facial expressions which are more ham than a quarter pound hamburger. But still Salman is arguably the most loved of the three khans in Bollywood today. And with kick he firmly establishes his creds as the king khan of Bollywood.

Nadiadwala, Rajat Arora and Keith Gomes adapt a 2009 Telugu hit of the same name and kick the adrenaline levels up a few notches. Salman plays Devi Lal Singh a genius of extraordinary proportions who cannot keep a job because he needs a constant ‘kick’ to justify his existence. He finds this in helping friends to elope with their girlfriends, by being the Good Samaritan and protecting the women folk from the evil eyes of pumped up goons. He meets and falls in love with Shaina played by the surprisingly beautiful Jacqueline Fernandez. Through curious circumstances Shaina meets Ace Cop Himanshu played by Randeep Hooda who is on the trail of a masked vigilante. What follows is a game of cat and mouse with enough wisecracks and witty one-liners to fill an entire season of Comedy nights with Kapil.

The action is fast paced and the exhilarating. The chase through the narrow lanes of Delhi and the stark streets of Warsaw is gripping to say the least. There are many visual influences from Hollywood action capers and blockbusters which are very apparent to the trained eye – like the underground police headquarters is curiously similar to the one in skyfall after the MI6 is blown up, the scene with the slo-mo pigeons is textbook john wu, Nawazuddin’s Shiv Gajra is clearly heath ledger’s joker inspired. But the inspirations here do not distract and are rather used masterfully to augment the adrenaline factor. Ayananaka Bose’s work behind the camera is exceptional it is soft and romantic in the Hangover song and it is gripping and thrilling in the action sequences, the tracking shots, the slo-mo action shots are all done exceptionally well. Himesh Reshamiya’s music also plays a good supporting role to the entire movie and the songs don’t seem to appear without a rhyme or a reason. The only real sore spot in the entire movie is Nargis Fakhri’s item number – the girl as pretty as she is cannot dance. But I am happy to overlook that because what we get in that less than a minute of Jacqueline’s Latin routine in the Jumme ki Raat had me picking my jaw up from the floor.

Like I said in the beginning – A Salman Khan movie defies explanation any reason and cannot be critiqued but all said and done the acting is good, the action is great and Jacqueline is a revelation. Dhoom 3 be damned – this has to be the highest grossing Indian movie of all time – because Kick is infinitely better than the Amir Khan caper.

Watch it for a full “Paisa Vasool” entertainment that does not really need you to keep your brain at home – it does not insult your senses (except for a London bus in warsaw) and still manages to be funny, sexy, slick and thrilling at the same time.